obviator

Right from the start Android has been designed with a form of Responsive Design. With scalable XML layouts, and selectors to choose which layout is loaded for different DPI devices, one could argue that even early versions of Android are at least as design-friendly as modern HTML5.

That's not to say there aren't challenges. But the whole point of Android was always to create an industry standard for a wide range of devices. This requires - by definition - support for a variety of screen sizes, DPIs, hardware features, etc. When most people talk about fragmentation as a negative point of Android, they're forgetting what Android is. A common platform, running on an unlimited number of devices. That's by design, not accident.

I've seen a few of my apps copied - and not just the functionality, but nearly identical name & description posted on Google Play! The automatic reaction is to be annoyed by this, but ultimately it's not a big deal for me.

In the long term, I think the positive effects of sharing with the developer community will outweigh the negative effects of copycats. Sure, it's a little disappointing to see someone else using your ideas. But I'd much rather this scenario (where everyone can copy, be inspired, or even steal freely), rather than a patent-ridden ecosystem where you can't take inspiration from anywhere, for fear of being sued.

So at the end of the day - no, I don't feel the same way. I understand the position Chris took with kreci.net, but for my part I just take the copycats as an indication that we're still living in a free marketplace :)

I'm the author of this post, would be happy to answer any questions people have about further stats from this month. There are a lot of networks, so it wasn't possible to post absolutely every detail!

I'll be watching this thread for a while, so feel free to post any queries you might have below.

IMEI most likely. They can transmit the number as a non-reversible hash (MD5 or similar), that way the number never gets sent or stored as plain text.

The graph of daily activations is pretty amazing. Based on current growth rates, they should pass 1 million daily activations some time in 2012.

How does this compare with elusivestars.com? They're trying to do a similar thing, allowing developers to upload Android apps and pay reviewers to provide feedback. The goal is also to provide better reviews than the Android Market.

Personally, I'd be more interested in paying a small amount (say $10 per review) to a number of people and getting feedback from a few different perspectives, rather than putting all my eggs in one basket. $100 per review would only be worth it if the review would be published in a prominent place where it could provide some publicity for my app as well.

"Check the timing of transitions between visible elements."

I think this comment is even more valuable than the rest of the article. Coding tips are helpful, but most of these can be figured out pretty quickly by a decent programmer. The timing / UI lag issue is something that I see a lot with Android apps, but not so much on iOS. As an Android developer it's important to consider these little details, and be aware that not everybody on the market will have a phone as powerful as yours ;)

Great to see some solid income from an Android developer! I find it interesting that the primary source of revenue is adverts in free apps. Some of the comments I've seen previously on HN seemed to indicate this isn't really possible. Evidently it is :)

It would be interesting to see some stats about active users / new installs, to see how that relates to the advertising income.

Great, thanks for the feedback. Glad someone's on top of it :)

This is an excellent service for tracking bugs in your Android apps. Unfortunately, it's not so much use if quota limitations take down the whole site. Doesn't Google have some way to increase quota on-demand (automatically) to cater for intense load?

I agree. The barrier to entry for developing iOS apps is too high for me, as I'd have to buy a Mac and, realistically speaking, an iOS device for testing. But I can run the Android SDK on all my computers, Windows & Linux alike, so development is available wherever I am.

Also, the Android SDK works really well for testing with a physical device. Plug in by USB, or use wireless ADB, and it only takes a couple of seconds to deploy a debug package to your testing device. Much faster than using the emulator.

I'm actually the guy running the site, so just thought I'd add my 2 cents :) With this site, the main focus is building a business model around Android development - "making money" with Android. That's not to say app quality has to go out the door. In my experience, you can't really build a sustainable business around crappy products. So it's in my best interests to keep up the quality, even if the business development is the stated goal (and the one I'll write most about).

Agree with you 100% that quality is key to success. I just chose to focus on the business & financial side of things, since at the time I started this blog there weren't many people writing about their experiences with Android.

Google has shut down all invitations for the night. Not sure when they'll be re-opening, but you probably won't be able to use the link until then.

Looks like they just disabled invites again.

sent

Sounds good. I'm guessing once enough people get invites, some might start doubling up on handing out invitations. Oh well, probably won't hurt to get invited twice :)

I've got invites to share (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712165)

Invited everyone here so far, will try to check back every now and again to get any new ones.

Agreed that zrgiu's comment was constructive and had some good advice. No idea why it was downvoted so quickly.

I'd love to hear your story, it's always great to read about another developers experience even if it's not always a runaway success. Would you mind sharing the link? Or else you could email me thebigbyte [at] gmail [dot-com]

Be aware though - Google has a system in place to prevent gaming the just-in queue. So if you push updates too frequently they won't appear in the list. I've had this happen with my app a few times.

It seems that 8 days is the minimum time between updates, to qualify for this "just-in" status. A few developers have reported this figure, and it's worked for me recently.

Haven't contacted any at this stage - thanks for the tip though, I'll definitely look at doing that in future. I guess with this app I was just so focussed on the development side of things, and getting the whole process working that I didn't spend much time marketing the app itself.

Does anyone have a recommendation for some good app review websites? I've seen a few spammy ones around, just wondering if there's one or two sites people actually find useful?

That's true, I chose the advertising method for this app, although its probably slower than selling a paid app on the App Store or Android Market. The biggest factor that led me to decide on a free app was the ability to gather some useful analytics. Publishing a paid app might make more money in the short term, but only get a total of a few dozen installs. Since this was my first app, I thought it would help to do some market research first. Now there are about 1000 active users which gives me a good indication of where to focus future development effort. :)

openSuSE - the best KDE distro. I tried Ubuntu for a while but was frustrated by some of the oversimplification of the GNOME interface.

I'm using Mouseflow for one of my sites at the moment, and I've also used CrazyEgg in the past. They're both great services, but I'm looking for some custom javascript to integrate into my own app.

Another data analysis tool that has been around for some time is IBM's "Many Eyes" project: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/

There is quite a large volume of user-submitted data at that site, and some very effective visualisation options.

A bigger problem (for developers and designers) is when people don't realise there's a difference between "Client" and "Designer".

Looks like a very extensive platform, great to see another major company open-sourcing their product. For me, the key question now is what level of support will be offered (by Ebay and/or the general developer community). Once this project achieves a bit of momentum from other companies' implementations I can see it presenting a very viable option for larger-scale deployments.

I have used Symfony for my last few projects. I'm happy with the way the framework is designed, and it's quite longstanding. Another benefit is the templating is done using pure PHP, so you don't have to learn a new templating language for loops, etc. A new version (v2.0) is due to come out later this year.

The introductory documentation and tutorial are excellent. The Jobeet tutorial walks you through how to create an entire application, with the Symfony developers' best practices being implemented right from the start.

Only con: I do have trouble at times finding answers to the obscure questions I have. There seem to be a lot of forum threads about Symfony, but not quite so many answers. If you can find an experienced Symfony developer, I highly recommend talking to them and getting a few pointers in the right direction. That said, I think it's a great framework, a little on the old side in terms of style, but still quite flexible.

This certainly seems to indicate that great product diversity is not necessary for strong financial performance in the short to mid term. I think the question here is more one of longetivity - how long will this "one trick" remain relevant, and retain a large enough market to keep increasing the profits?

All those oil companies would run into a lot of trouble if, say, the oil ran out. On the other hand, Microsoft could keep generating substantial revenue even if people stopped buying the XBox for example. Their other (major) products such as Windows and Office provide enough diversity to keep them relevant, despite the loss of one or two major markets.